Essential Reading
Most days when I peruse the Huffington Post, I find nothing but the usual Washington-focused partisan wankery. Occassionally, though, an article like this shows up. It’s a provocative piece accusing the current generation of “killing rock’n’roll”.
“The digital revolution was supposed to empower musicians. On my own MySpace page, I can upload my own band’s music to the web in a matter of minutes, and sell it to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Theoretically, it has never been easier to be heard. Yet hundreds of thousands of other musicians are competing for attention online. Winning new fans and staying connected to them requires tremendous marketing sophistication.
“Without support from a record label, musicians must master the intricacies of search engine optimization, social networking, email blasts, and twittering — not to mention traditional tasks like booking shows. Not surprisingly, many musicians lack such skills.
“Can you, even for a moment, imagine Janis Joplin pouring over HTML manuals, or Jimi Hendrix spending hours each day spamming potential fans on MySpace? Not likely. Had those two tried to make it in today’s marketplace, we may never have even heard of them.
“And what if internet piracy had existed in the 1960s? No Dylan? No Beatles? Would Bono be working today as a longshoreman?”
Some good stuff here. It’s worth a read.
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2 Comments
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If the record labels continue to shovel tripe like Sa$ha and Britney to market, I have a hard time feeling sympathy. Labels lost their edge years ago. They can blame the digital download if they want buy the truth is, they are now finally having to eat some humble pie.
The article mentions several artists who would never have made it in the current age due to their requiring two and three albums before a real hit occurred. The problem is, there is a 20 or 30 year gap between those listed and the emergence of the MP3 format.
I would argue the labels started hacking and slashing their development budgets long before the advent of the internet. They are just in the past couple of years having to pay for the greed of the 80s and early 90s
By the way I do in fact still purchase the music I listen to.
As to the ability of an artist to code their own HTML as it were, I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people that can step into that roll and offer those services to artists.
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There’s an artist who made a comment about this a few years ago that kind of goes along with this.
Weird Al of all people commented about this a couple years ago in slightly different context.Essentially his job is getting harder because the days of long term hit singles (a song that becomes a hit and stays a hit for a while and stays in the public consensus) have disappeared.
Artists hit the top of the charts and vanish within a week or two which makes creating a parody hard work. The only thing that has helped with that is the new ability to release songs instantly.
Okay…maybe I got a little off track…
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